Conductor/orchestra partnerships....

[cloughie]

Nah....!!!

It's all opinion.

Can't you just say that both were very good. I never heard Karajan - he had the temerity to die before I had a chance.

The BPO was already one of the world's best orchestras, or so I believe, when Karajan took over. That wasn't the case with the Halle.

Exactly, Barbirolli was a builder, Karajan was a polisher!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Perhaps now would be an appropriate moment to mention the 12 year association that Karajan had with the Philharmonia Orchestra, from 1948 (a week after Karajan's 40th birthday, and two-and-a-half years after the orchestra's first appearance) until 1960.

[Beef Oven!]

Exactly, Barbirolli was a builder, Karajan was a polisher!

[cloughie]

[cloughie]

Perhaps now would be an appropriate moment to mention the 12 year association that Karajan had with the Philharmonia Orchestra, from 1948 (a week after Karajan's 40th birthday, and two-and-a-half years after the orchestra's first appearance) until 1960.

Yes he had a Legge up to that post!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Yes he had a Legge up to that post!

Indeed - as did Guilini, Cantelli, Klemperer, and everyone who worked with the orchestra before 1964, including Toscanini and Furtwangler. (Klemperer was the first designated Chief Conductor of the Philharmonia - for all his work "building and polishing" the orchestra, Karajan was always essentially freelance; everyone expected him to be moving to Berlin sooner or later.)

[bluestateprommer]

Since JLW started this thread under "Record Review", if we want to put the recording studio/commercial recordings as the primary criterion, these partnerships must be mentioned:
* Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Ernest Ansermet: 49-year chief conductorship, ~20 or so years of recordings (at a rough guestimate)
* Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Sir Neville Marriner: ~45-year partnership or so, live and on record

On JLW's initial point about Philly and YNS, YNS is contracted currently with the Fabulous Philadelphians through 2026 (barring the end of civilization before then triggered by our idiot Preznit, of course). Any recorded legacy will clearly pale in comparison to Ormandy, and even to Muti. With Sawallisch, their EMI contract imploded in the midst of his tenure. Eschenbach wasn't around long enough to leave much of a legacy. I've heard the recent YNS recording of Rachmaninov 2 & 4 with Daniil Trifonov; it was good, without necessarily blowing me away. We'll see the YNS/Philly partnership brings in other recordings down the line.

[verismissimo]

Yes, thanks to JLW for a thought-provoking thread.

I would add:

Furtwaengler/BPO
Mravinsky/Leningrad Phil
Boulez/BBCSO
Mackerras/SCO
Harnoncourt/Concentus Musikus Wien
Barenboim/Berlin Staatskapelle

I find Klemperer's recordings with the Philharmonia harder to take these days.

And I agree with whoever said that Mirga promises much with the CBSO.

[bluestateprommer]

I would add:...

Harnoncourt/Concentus Musicus Wien

Extremely good catch; shame on me for missing this 60+ year partnership, about 50 of which included recordings. In that light, other somewhat unsung partnership on records and live might also include:

* Orchestre des Champs Elysees & Collegium Vocale Gent, Philippe Herreweghe
* Lahti Symphony & Osmo Vanska
* Gothenburg Symphony & Neeme Jarvi

[jayne lee wilson]

Another angle…..partnerships that are also essentially musical…

Delius with Beecham and the Royal Phil; Vaughn Williams with Handley in Liverpool, or with Barbirolli and the Halle in Manchester; Boult and the London Phil in Elgar….

Copland on the New York Phil with Bernstein, Dvorak and Martinu played by the Czech Phil, the Prague RSO or SO; French music in Paris - Roussel on the Lamoureux with Munch, Martinon with the ORTF playing Roussel, Ravel and Debussy….
Stravinsky with the Columbia or the CBC….

Bruckner played by the Vienna and Berlin orchestras of the 40s and 50s….

Shostakovich with Kondrashin, Rozh or Mravinsky in Moscow or Leningrad.

All of these have something beyond technical excellence, fine recorded balances, musical sensitivity and subtlety of expression; some of them even sound distorted or compressed, the ensemble imperfect, under-rehearsed, even slipshod.
They tell us something that the classical orchestral diaspora cannot; easier to hear than to articulate, that instinctive response to the source, of how the music came to sound and how it should move; from folksong, popular song, marches and dances; how local musical traditions came to shape, almost physically, the instruments and the people who play them.

Call it “idiomatic” - IDIOS - something owned, private, even secret; but then GIVEN, in concert, to us all.
We say it’s “in the blood” of these performers; a spiritus loci, like landscape and cityscape and speech becoming song; like a collective memory shared by the players, the creator, the local audience.
You can enjoy the music without it - other orchestras may play it more precisely, more “beautifully” - but your understanding, instinctive or comparative, will be incomplete.

You may need to saturate yourself in it, forsaking all other, to hear what it has to say to you.

[mathias broucek]

Another angle…..partnerships that are also essentially musical…

Delius with Beecham and the Royal Phil; Vaughn Williams with Handley in Liverpool, or with Barbirolli and the Halle in Manchester; Boult and the London Phil in Elgar….

Copland on the New York Phil with Bernstein, Dvorak and Martinu played by the Czech Phil, the Prague RSO or SO; French music in Paris - Roussel on the Lamoureux with Munch, Martinon with the ORTF playing Roussel, Ravel and Debussy….
Stravinsky with the Columbia or the CBC….

Bruckner played by the Vienna and Berlin orchestras of the 40s and 50s….

Shostakovich with Kondrashin, Rozh or Mravinsky in Moscow or Leningrad.

All of these have something beyond technical excellence, fine recorded balances, musical sensitivity and subtlety of expression; some of them even sound distorted or compressed, the ensemble imperfect, under-rehearsed, even slipshod.
They tell us something that the classical orchestral diaspora cannot; easier to hear than to articulate, that instinctive response to the source, of how the music came to sound and how it should move; from folksong, popular song, marches and dances; how local musical traditions came to shape, almost physically, the instruments and the people who play them.

Call it “idiomatic” - IDIOS - something owned, private, even secret; but then GIVEN, in concert, to us all.
We say it’s “in the blood” of these performers; a spiritus loci, like landscape and cityscape and speech becoming song; like a collective memory shared by the players, the creator, the local audience.
You can enjoy the music without it - other orchestras may play it more precisely, more “beautifully” - but your understanding, instinctive or comparative, will be incomplete.

You may need to saturate yourself in it, forsaking all other, to hear what it has to say to you.

SKD in Strauss...

[MickyD]

Christopher Hogwood and his Academy of Ancient Music. It started as an idea between Hogwood and Decca producer Peter Wadland way back in the early 70s, assembling a group of keen HIP musicians for their first experimental recording, that of the Arne overtures. It still holds up pretty well today.

[Petrushka]

We had a similar discussion to this in a thread revolving around whether today's conductors are as good as those from the past and, I think, richardfinegold made the point about the 'great' conductors having the benefit of living and working with the composers whose music they played or, at the very least, were part of the same world. Think Kempe or Karajan in Strauss, Solti in Bartok, Walter in Mahler and, yes, Rozhestvensky/Svetlanov/Mravinsky in Shostakovich.

Thank goodness for recordings eh?

[verismissimo]

Czech Phil / Ancerl

[bluestateprommer]

Alex Ross has a recent New Yorker article on the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra / Manfred Honeck artistic partnership, with initial mention of their series of recordings:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/02/10/the-pittsburgh-symphonys-savage-precision